John Cassavetes is still better known for being in The Dirty Dozen in 1967, Rosemary’s Baby the following year. But he used his acting fees from those movies to make his own. He wrote and directed nine films from 1959-1984 so fearless and individual (he is credited with three others but they were not from scripts of his), it is a wonder they were ever made, it is a wonder they are still around (many had been unavailable for several years and two-Minnie and Moskowitz and Love Streams-are still not available on DVD), finally,  it is a wonder for the viewer, who craving something different gets something extraordinary.

The films feel improvised but actually they are not, the dialogue was already in the script. The cinematography is gittery and Cassavetes even pushed his cameraman while shooting a scene to give it a broken look. They were countless hours of rehearsals and takes. Like Ingmar Bergman before him, he developed a stock company of actors. Gena Rowlands (his wife), Peter Falk, Seymour Cassel, Ben Gazarra, himself, his mother, his mother-in-law and his children all make regular appearances. The films concern working class people, mothers, fathers, friends, strangers. There are no special effects, no murder/mystery, just raw emotion-people grappling with how to love, with what happiness is.

Husbands, from 1970, concerns three men in the days after they lose their close friend. They are husbands, they have children, but death sends them searching, drinking and regressing to an infantile state. This clip (from the start of the film) begins on the subway with the three main characters before a round of calisthenics. At 7:20 a very long singing contest of sorts begins. The banter on the subway is an example of Cassavetes’ strangely cadenced dialogue. It’s so grossly like real life with half sentences and mumbles that it is ornate.

Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) begins with showing one of the main characters, Moskowitz (Seymour Cassel) at work, going to see a movie-he then goes into a diner and talks with a stranger (at 3:15) in one of the most delirious encounters ever captured on film. One reason might be the stranger is played by the infamous Peter Carey, a man so wild Hollywood blackballed him, though he was in two early Kubrick films (The Killing and Paths of Glory). The stranger never returns (can you imagine pitching the studios today a film in which a character who speaks for five of the first nine minutes of the film is never seen again?). The non sequiturs in the stranger’s diatribe is like something out of Donald Barthelme, including the coup de grace to the waitress at the end.

Don’t you just love freckles?

In 1974 comes the masterpiece, A Woman Under the Influence. Cassavetes films never had slick distribution deals, he was one of the first American filmmakers to take his films to college campuses to get shown.  Despite this, the film made a huge profit and received Oscar nominations for Actress (Rowlands) and Director(Cassavetes).   Because  Cassavetes used non-union workers on the film (and the film had made a chunk of change), Charlton Heston, then head of the Screen Actors Guild, threatened to sue Cassavetes. It never came to anything.

The film that Viennese director Michael Haneke calls one of the ten greatest films ever, concerns a husband and wife and their three children. Nick (Peter Falk) is a construction worker, his wife Mabel (Gena Rowlands) a mother. She is acting more and more on the verge of a breakdown. Nick tries to deal with her in this early scene. He has just brought his construction co-workers home early in the morning and what follows is a spaghetti breakfast cooked by Mabel. Most of the workers are non-actors. Again the dialogue is staggering in its naturalism and seemingly random, but artful divergences. I have never seen acting like this on film. It has shattered me again and again to watch it, knowing what the two characters are in for later.

The frustration is aptly captured. The forgiveness real, affecting. Nothing is phony here. Cassavetes shows all the faults and foibles of his characters-he doesn’t hide anything, neither do they.

Later in the film the breakdown does come. At 2:48 in this clip Mabel gives a speech about her life. Every time I watch this I finally grok the meaning of catharsis.

Ultimately Mabel returns to her family after a stay in the hospital, but we then see that maybe her husband was the one who should have been there too. The climax is incredible, almost unbearable. but it is a very rich art. It is the equivalent of the last scene of King Lear. I hope you will rent this film.

Ultimately Cassavetes died of alcoholism at 59. His characters represent himself-crazy, hard but soft, hard-drinking, searching, laughing, joking, wanting love. His influence on film is still misunderstood and underappreciated. There would not be the Scorsese in the fashion that is Scorsese without Cassavetes. He created American independent cinema.

For further resources visit the Ray Carney pages.

On the magical night of November 20. The love to fall in love, we’ll be dealing with sound recording and filming dialogue.
It’s an art, and a delicious and precise one at that.

It’ll be one heck of a time, so make it down.

After the workshop we’ll allow writer/director John Cassavetes shows us one of reasons the film medium was invented with A Woman Under The Influence (1974)

So there it is and will be: Friday November 20, 6pm, in Room 435 St. Patrick’s Building. Now rm 435 is just around the corner from 400, backing on the it.

k

VERDICT:
8/10 Questionable Babysitters

The first John Cassavetes movie I’ve ever seen, and man, what a freakin’ powerhouse.

A Woman Under The Influence follows the life of a husband struggling to keep his family and marriage together as his mentally unstable wife slowly declines from socially awkward to borderline insane.

The movie doesn’t really follow a normal plot structure, but rather creates the drama by more or less dropping the audience into the middle of this harrowing crisis as we witness a day in the life of a family coming apart. Now, I’ve never been mentally ill (as far as I know), nor have I ever had to live with someone mentally ill, but I can only imagine that this movie gets pretty damn close to what it must be like. It doesn’t take long before you’re invested in this family and want to see things return to normalcy for them, and as a result it often times becomes an experience that’s nothing short of painful to watch; painful in a good way.

Being that this movie isn’t very complicated in its execution and feels like it could pass for a stage play, the two deal breakers that make this movie stand out are its acting and writing. The mentally sound husband here is played by Peter Falk – the guy who played Columbo, for anyone out there who watched Columbo - and, boy, does he nail it. All the emotions that would come with watching the person you love, the mother to your children, transform into a stranger before your eyes – all the anger, the guilt, the confusion – all of it comes nothing short of naturally to Falk as he makes this tough role his own.

But the scene stealer in A Woman Under The Influence is the said woman, clearly influenced by her craziness, played by Gena Rowlands. I can’t say that I’ve seen Gena Rowlands in anything other than her bit role in The Notebook, but holy hell, this is arguably some of the best acting I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s as though Cassavetes went out to the local mental ward, pulled Gena Rowlands out of her straitjacket, stood her in front a camera, convinced her that everything written inside the script she was gnawing on is actually her real life, and then said, “Action!“. What Rowlands brings to the screen in this movie is something that really can’t be justified in text, but there’s something to be said about taking something manufactured like a movie script and turn it into something that feels overwhelmingly genuine. Rowlands and Falk accomplish this together in such a profound and convincing way that it makes me cringe even further when I think back to how Revolutionary Road tried to go about capturing this sentiment.

And the great thing about the writing here is that it almost feels non-existent. I’m sure a great script existed, but the dialogue doesn’t feel rehearsed, it feels like it’s spoken from the heart. It’s as though the actors were given an idea of what to say and how to act/react in various situations but were told to improvise accordingly rather than recite their lines. And it totally works in everyone’s favor.

I really didn’t know what to expect going into this movie, only that I’d heard it was a Cassavetes classic and that it compelled the guy who writes the descriptions on the Netflix DVD sheafs to completely disregard detailing what the movie is about in lieu of going on a tirade about how this revolutionized the way he viewed movies. It’s a bit on the long side and you probably need to be in the mood for a talking heads movie to be totally into it, but A Woman Under the Influence is easily one of the more satisfying movie discoveries I’ve come across as of late. I can only hope that the rest of Cassavetes’ movies are this good.

So thank your lucky stars and give your significant other a big kiss and a bearhug, because, Sugar, things could be a whole lot worse.

Rant re-posted from Match-Cut:

How does one rate a film like A Woman Under the Influence when it seems it’s so largely concerned with being suffocating and uncomfortable?

I’ve seen this movie before, and I was blown away by its madness and emotional impact. 2nd time around, I feel less impressed emotionally, but more impressed thematically. I’ve discovered ideas and layers that I wasn’t privy to before. Certain glances had a new impact on me. I discovered what I think is the film’s sense of humor. I’ve discovered what seems to be Cassavetes’ idealist post-racist(different from post-racial) play. I’ve identified the camera as a sort of provocateur. Intruding its way into personal spaces and becoming an unwelcome participant in absolute turmoil. I’ve identified some areas that bordered on didactic that I didn’t much care for. Those areas don’t seem particularly prominent or important in the scope of things. The film so wonderfully renders every single instance of social pretense as being horribly trying and awkward. This is not a space you wanna inhabit, but somehow, beneath the “performances” and in the midst of the constant barrage of madness, there’s a chemistry between Mabel and Nick. They understand each other. They’re both equally crazy in their own ways. Nick with his temper, Mabel with her incessant desire to please and her wild, strange gestures. Just as often as Mabel is oppressed by the daily routine expected of a housewife, she is oppressed by what she perceives as being expected of her, as well as the people who are constantly coming in and out of her life in one way or another.

Every meeting, every individual scenario is a tragedy. Everything has to be just right, or Nick himself is gonna flip out before Mabel even has the chance to. Nick is under just as much pressure as Mabel, but obviously for very different reasons. He tries to keep everything in order. He wants to temper reactions and keep Mabel as Mabel, but also as acceptable to others. It’s an impossible balance. I found myself kind of disoriented in the midst of all the yelling and characters doing idiosyncratic things, but I understand this is part of Cassavetes’ auteurism. He’s constantly questioning the way in which people are expected to act. He recognizes we are not who we were yesterday or last year. We are constantly changing, and he exaggerates this by having his characters act in ways they might not be expected to. Characters get angry for seemingly no reason, or for reasons we might not deem worthy of such hostility. Mabel makes weird gestures that Nick attempts to identify and analyze. Nick gets frustrated when he can’t maintain his house. Everyone is trying their best to be happy. Nick urges Mabel to be herself and for everyone at the party to behave normally, but they can’t help but try to avoid saying or doing the wrong thing to set off Mabel. Here’s Mabel. Everyone, quick — to your places! Oh wait, no. Can’t have this many people. Too much pressure. Too many glaring faces anticipating a breakdown. Perhaps there’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that Mabel and Nick can’t function without the chaos they seem to be trying to avoid. But can we see them as being with anyone else?

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Crazy people going even crazier!

Written By: John Cassavetes
Directed By: John Cassavetes

In A Woman Under The Influence the camera constantly lingers and hovers. It doesn’t intrude on the action, it observes and floats like a leaf from spot to spot as if it has no will of its own. It operates like a ghostly specter, like a being powerless to look away from Mabel and Nick. We are the camera, we want to look away, there are moments where we can’t help but cringe. But, the camera is our guide and just like the camera we are powerless. We can’t look away, we can’t make it stop.

Power is at the heart of A Woman Under The Influence, but it isn’t traditional power. In some ways the film is about control, but it’s mainly about a lack of control. Mabel is fine around her husband, she’s still bat shit, but he finds it cute and she manages to function. It’s when she is around others that she loses her control, she doesn’t know what to do, what is acceptable and what isn’t. Mabel is powerless, just like the camera and just like the viewer. It’s almost as if Mabel is a character in the play of her life, she must act crazy because that is what her role calls for. Whether she wants to change it up or not is inconsequential, she lacks the power to do anything differently.

The movie spends the first hour and twenty minutes presenting the case for Mabel, but then an interesting thing happens, we learn that Nick is just as crazy as Mabel is. He gets away with it because his craziness can be vented through accepted means. Yelling and taking control of those around him. Nick has no control, he is just as powerless as his wife, and it is through his attempts to control all those around him that we see how powerless he really is. No one does what he wants, he screams and yells and tries to assert control, but no one listens or does as he commands because he doesn’t know what he really wants. The circumstances of his life may label him sane, but over time the truth is revealed and the real symmetry in the marriage is revealed, they are both functioning on a different plane and that is why they click so well, yet are always at odds.

I don’t know how to get into the performances of Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands without using a lot of hyperbole, but I shall try. To say that their performances drive the movie would be an understatement, but it is true. Rowland could have gone straight to over the top insane, but she doesn’t. Mabel is crazy, she clearly has mental issues, but Rowlands underplays them until the moment is right to explode. This decision makes her performance stronger and more honest. The same is true of Falk, he could have yelled and stomped through the entire picture. But, he plays Nick almost tenderly, exposing someone who is a mess of contradictions and is full of fear beneath the stormy exterior.

There are moments in A Woman Under The Influence that don’t fit, but only a few of them. It’s not even that they don’t fit, they just feel off for some reason, like the confrontation between the father of the visiting children and Nick. But, those moments are small and don’t hamper the film that much. It’s funny that at the end of the day A Woman Under The Influence is a movie about dysfunction that may actually be about the functionality that is present in mysterious places. It’s certainly a great movie, whether functional or dysfunctional.

Rating:

***1/2

Cheers,
Bill

A selection of favourites – of films so immaculately crafted and executed, a mark of excellence… although several of these filmmakers have numerous films to their credit, I have selected the film that stood out for me as perfectly sculpted. They are not chosen for being serious dramas, or alternative art – infact they are not chosen for their genre – the craft of the director lies in the translation of the story onto screen – and even action films take a certain depth of skill to pull off. This list is my way of applauding the director:

Al Pacino for Looking for Richard

Alexander Witt for Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Alex Proyas for The Crow

Alfred Hitchcock for North by Northwest

Andrew Davis for Under Siege

Andrew Niccol for Gattaca

Andrew Stanton for Wall-E

Andy Tennant for Anna and the King

Ang Lee for Hulk

Antoine Fuqua for Training Day

Bahman Ghobadi for Turtles Can Fly

Barry Levinson for Good Morning Vietnam

Barry Sonnenfeld for Get Shorty

Betty Thomas for Only You

Blake Edwards for The Party

Boaz Yakin for Remember the Titans

Bobcat Goldthwait for World’s Greatest Dad

Brad Bird for Ratatouille

Bress-Gruber for The Butterfly Effect

Brian De Palma for Scarface

Bryan Singer for X-Men

Cameron Crowe for Jerry Maguire

Cecil B. DeMille for Samson and Delilah

Chris Columbus for Rent

Chris Noonan for Babe

Christian Duguay for The Assignment

Christophe Gans for Silent Hill

Christopher Nolan for The Prestige

Clint Eastwood for Million Dollar Baby

Coen Brothers for Intolerable Cruelty

Craig Brewer for Black Snake Moan

Curtis Hanson for 8 Mile

Danny Boyle for Sunshine

Danny DeVito for Death to Smoochy

Darren Aronofsky for The Fountain

David Cronenberg for Dead Ringers

David Frankel for The Devil Wears Prada

David Fincher for Fight Club

David Lean for Lawrence of Arabia

David Twohy for Chronicles of Riddick

Donald Petrie for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

Doug Liman for Mr & Mrs Smith

Ed Harris for Pollock

Edward Zwick for The Last Samurai

F Gary Gray for Friday

Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck for The Lives of Others

Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather

Francis Lawrence for Constantine

Frank Coraci for The Waterboy

Frank Darabont for The Shawshank Redemption

Frank Oz for Housesitter

Fred Schepisi for Fierce Creatures

Gary Ross for Seabiscuit

George Miller for Mad Max II

Gil Junger for 10 Things I Hate About You

Gregory Hoblit for Primal Fear

Guy Ritchie for Revolver

Gore Verbinski for Pirates of the Caribbean

Gordon Chan for Fist of Legend

Harold Ramis for Groundhog Day

Iain Softley for K-Pax

Ivan Reitman for Dave

James Cameron for Terminator II

James L Brooks for As Good As It Gets

Jason Reitman for Thank You For Smoking

Jean-Paul Rappeneau for Cyrano De Bergerac

Jean-Pierre Jeunet for Amelie

Jeremy Sims for Last Train to Freo

Jesse Dylan for American Wedding

Jessica Bendinger for Stick It

JJ Abrams for Mission Impossible III

Joe Johnston for Hidalgo

Joel Schumacher for The Number 23

John Cassavetes for A Woman Under the Influence

John Dahl for Rounders

John Frankenheimer for Ronin

John G. Avildsen for Karate Kid II

John Hughes for The Breakfast Club

John Landis for Coming To America

John McTiernan for Hunt for Red October

John Woo for Paycheck

Jon Amiel for Sommersby

Jon Favreau for Iron Man

Jonathan Demme for The Silence of the Lambs

Kevin Costner for Dances With Wolves

Kevin Macdonald for Touching the Void

Kevin Smith for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Kurt Wimmer for Ultraviolet

Larry Charles for Bruno

Lawrence Kasdan for French Kiss

Len Wiseman for Underworld

Liz Friedlander for Take the Lead

Luc Besson for The Professional

Mark Forster for Stranger Than Fiction

Marlon Brando for One-Eyed Jacks

Martin Brest for Scent of a Woman

Martin Scorsese for The Last Temptation of Christ

Martin Campbell for Casino Royale

Matthew Vaughn for Layer Cake

Meirelles-Lund for City of God

Mel Gibson for Braveheart

Michael Almereyda for Hamlet

Michael Bay for The Island

Michael Mann for The Insider

Michel Gondry for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Mike Figgis for Leaving Las Vegas

Mike Nichols for Primary Colors

Milos Forman for Man on the Moon

Miranda July for Me And You And Everyone We Know

M Night Shyamalan for Lady in the Water

Nancy Meyers for What Women Want

Neveldine-Taylor for Crank

Nicholas Ray for King of Kings

Nicholas Stoller for Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Oliver Stone for Any Given Sunday

Pan Nalin for Valley of Flowers

Paul Anderson for Event Horizon

Paul Greengrass for The Bourne Ultimatum

Paul Thomas Anderson for There Will Be Blood

Paul Verhoeven for Robocop

Peter Brook for The Mahabharata

Peter Weir for Dead Poet’s Society

Phil Alden Robinson for Sneakers

Phillip Noyce for The Saint

Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill

Reginald Hudlin for The Great White Hype

Richard Attenborough for Gandhi

Richard Curtis for Love Actually

Richard Donner for Maverick

Richard Loncraine for Wimbledon

Ridley Scott for Gladiator

Rob Reiner for A Few Good Men

Robert Altman for Gosford Park

Robert Rodriguez for Desperado

Robert Wise for The Sound of Music

Robert Zemeckis for Forrest Gump

Roberto Benigni for Life is Beautiful

Roger Donaldson for Thirteen Days

Roger Spottiswoode for The 6th Day

Roland Emmerich for The Patriot

Ron Howard for Ransom

Ron Shelton for Tin Cup

Rowdy Herrington for Gladiator

Sam Mendes for American Beauty

Sam Raimi for The Quick and the Dead

Scott Hicks for Shine

Sergei M. Eisenstein for Que Viva Mexico

Sidney Lumet for Network

Simon West for Con Air

Spike Jonze for Adaptation

Stacy Title for The Last Supper

Stanley Kubrick for A Clockwork Orange

Stephen Chow for Shaolin Soccer

Stephen Sommers for Van Helsing

Steven Spielberg for Schindler’s List

Steven Soderbergh for Ocean’s Eleven

Tarsem Singh for The Cell

Taylor Hackford for Ray

Terry George for Hotel Rwanda

Terry Gilliam for The Fisher King

Tim Burton for Batman Returns

Timur Bekmambetov for Wanted

Tom Shadyac for Patch Adams

Tom Vaughan for What Happens In Vegas

Tony Kaye for American History X

Tony Scott for Deja Vu

Vincent Ward for What Dreams May Come

Wachowski Brothers for The Matrix

Walter Hill for Last Man Standing

Warren Beatty for Bulworth

William Friedkin for 12 Angry Men

Wolfgang Petersen for Outbreak

Woody Allen for Deconstructing Harry

Xavier Gens for Hitman

Zack Snyder for 300

A special mention must be made for the following directors whose visions are so illumined that they have more than once delivered works par excellence:

1 Michael Mann – The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Heat (1995), The Insider (1999), Ali (2001), Collateral (2004)

2 Michael Bay – Bad Boys (1995), The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998), Bad Boys II (2003), The Island (2005), Transformers (2007)

3 John McTiernan – Predator (1987), Die Hard (1988), Hunt For Red October (1990), Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

4 Steven Spielberg – Amblin’ (1968),  Jaws (1975), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Always (1989), Hook (1991), Jurassic Park (1993), Schindler’s List (1993), The Lost World (1997), Amistad (1997), Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), Minority Report (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), Munich (2005)

5 Tony Scott – Top Gun (1990), Crimson Tide (1995), Enemy of the State (1998), Spy Game (2001), Man on Fire (2004), Deja Vu (2006)

6 Stephen Sommers – The Jungle Book (1994), The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), Van Helsing (2004)

7 Ridley Scott – Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma & Louise (1991), G.I.Jane (1997), Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), A Good Year (2006), American Gangster (2007)

8 Len Wiseman – Underworld (2003), Underworld: Evolution (2006), Die Hard 4.0: Live Free Or Die Hard (2007)

9 Robert Zemeckis – Romancing the Stone (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Back to the Future Pt II & III (1989-90), Death Becomes Her (1992), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997), Cast Away (2000), The Polar Express (2004)

10 Luc Besson – Leon: The Professional (1994), The Fith Element (1997), Angel-A (2005)

11 Danny Boyle – Transpotting (1996), The Beach (2000), 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007), Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

12 James Cameron – The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), True Lies (1994), Titanic (1997)

13 Christopher Nolan – Memento (2000), Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Night (2008)

14 Bryan Singer – The Usual Suspects (1995), X-Men (2000), X2 (2003)

15 Terry Gilliam – Brazil (1985), The Fisher King (1991), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Tideland (2005)

16 Wolfgang Petersen – In the Line of Fire (1993), Outbreak (1995), Air Force One (1997), Troy (2004)

17 Robert Rodriguez – Desperado (1995), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), Sin City (2005)

18 Clint Eastwood – Unforgiven (1992), A Perfect World (1993), Million Dollar Baby (2004)

19 Rob Reiner – Stand By Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Misery (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), The American President (1995)

20 Christophe Gans – Necronomicon (1993), Crying Freeman (1995), Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), Silent Hill (2006)

21 Francis Ford Coppola - The Godfather (1972), Godfather Pt II (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979), Dracula (1992), The Rainmaker (1997)

22 Brian De Palma – Scarface (1983), The Untouchables (1987), Carlito’s Way (1993), Mission: Impossible (1996), Snake Eyes (1998), Mission to Mars (2000)

23 Richard Donner – The Omen (1976), Superman (1978), The Goonies (1985), Maverick (1994), Assassins (1995), Conspiracy Theory (1997), Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

24 Alex Proyas – The Crow (1994), Dark City (1998), I, Robot (2004), Knowing (2009)

25 Frank Darabont – The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999), The Majestic (2001)

26 Roland Emmerich – Universal Soldier (1992), Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), The Patriot (2000)

27 Barry Levinson – Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Rain Man (1988), Disclosure (1994), Wag the Dog (1997)

TOP 10 HIDDEN GEMS – Some mindblowing films you’ve probably never seen:

1. The Assignment
2. The Last Supper
3. Bulworth
4. Hidalgo
5. 13 Days
6. Outbreak
7. The Insider
8. Turtles Can Fly
9. Any Given Sunday
10. Me And You And Everyone We Know

Self-indulgence or Sheer Elegance?

The year was 1959. And an utterly low key film without any particular banner associated with it had released. It was directed by a relatively new actor in the industry. 50 years later, the film continues to amaze and charm audiences with the same power as it did at that time.  The actor was John Cassavetes and the film, Shadows. American underground cinema has undoubtedly been boosted by the arrival of John Cassavetes whose freedom and fluidity of characters and their emotions felt as a lease of oxygen in a studio driven defunct industry. However…

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“The study of authorship is not in itself a theory, only a topic or theme. It can involve a great variety of political positions and theoretical assumptions; and, like all types of criticism, it can be performed well or badly.” (James Naremore 2004)

The most exalted of auteur directors are often instinctively associated with particular film movements. Jean-Luc Godard and the Nouvelle Vague, Fritz Lang and German Expressionism, Luis Buñuel and Surrealism. For actor turned director John Cassavetes, independent American film is where he would make his name. He will forever be remembered as one of the most important directors of the 1970s.

Auteurism, as the study of authorship is better known, is far from an exact science. It cannot be simply taught and then understood, as it requires that one be able to engage with the theory on an intuitive level. The basic concept of auteur theory was inspired by a 1948 essay by French film critic and director Alexandre Astruc, where he first introduced the notion of ‘caméra-stylo’ or ‘camera-pen’. This encapsulated a range of ideas that all positioned the director of a film as the ultimate ‘author’, as the person primarily responsible for creating the artistry seen up on the screen. It was presented as a metaphor which would claim the camera as a pen and the screen as a piece of paper. A few years later this idea would be expanded upon substantially and turned into an entire movement by several film theorists and critics. It forever changed the way films are analysed and praised, and paved the way for a new breed of filmmaking, one that focused more on personal expression and less on pragmatic and economic methods of production.

Before auteurism wormed its way into existence, film discourse was a shell of what it is now, and concerned primarily with examining the relationship between representation and reality. Film was already considered an art form by those that wrote about it, but only in the sense that it possessed facets of truth and beauty. This resulted in discussions of the unique aesthetic attributes of film being ultimately more shallow than they could have been. Once the idea of the artist, which was already present across the other predominant art forms, migrated itself over to film, a lot of new possibilities opened up. If a film had an author, then that author must have a personal touch, and if a film has a personal touch, how can we see, feel, and analyse it? This proposed ’sole author’ defies the collaborative aspects of film production, but does not entirely shut them out. Because of the tightly intermingled process through which films are made, wherein they frequently utilize the artistic input of multiple individuals, it can often be difficult to choose just one name to stamp across the entire output. As such, not every director can necessarily be considered an auteur, although which ones are and which aren’t is a continuing problem for authorship. There are cases where producers, actors, or writers are seen as the auteur of a film, and these analyses seem equally as valid when considering the criteria for authorship is primarily being able to leave a prominent, distinguishable ’signature’ on a film. Due in part to this problem of collaboration, backlash emerged in the 1960s against auteur theory. There were also hefty unanswerable questions regarding the relationship between an author’s intent and the actual message conveyed in a film, which was often left up to subjective interpretation that could far exceed the often humble goals of the director, or perhaps undermine them entirely.

An authorship analysis of a single film would focus on the qualities which it seems the director has attributed to the film through their artistic involvement. To find and identify these qualities it is almost always prudent to watch closely several of the director’s other films, as this allows notable patterns to be discerned. Some directors are obviously more suited to this form of analysis, especially those that stick to certain themes and display common stylistic tendencies across their body of work. For instance, it is easy to pick out similarities across all of Ingmar Bergman’s films, the majority of which deal with existential ponderings and feature characters suffering from strong mental anguish. Then there is the repeated involvement of cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who is said to have helped carve out a consistent mise-en-scène which can be seen across almost all of Bergman’s filmography. Although the intricacies of Bergman’s work as an auteur go far deeper than his most prevalent of narrative and visual regularities, it is still clear after watching only a handful of his films that he has an idiosyncratic ’signature’ written across them. Whether this is by accident, by intention, or simply by determination, it is hard to say for sure.

John Cassavetes wrote and directed his first film, Shadows, in 1959. It was an impressive debut that showcased an intoxicating style with transgressive exploration of social themes and unique characters. Although Shadows would be seen in retrospect as dissimilar to his later and more renowned films, it still touched on a certain way of handling characters that can be found throughout much of Cassavetes’ later work. It also would be the starting point of Cassavetes’ distinctive use of a style similar in application and principle to cinéma vérité. Cinéma vérité literally means ‘film truth’, although that is an obvious fallacy as truth is about as subjective as anything else, and when put through the gaze of a camera becomes irreversibly warped to perspective. Cinéma vérité originally came about along with the advent of more portable camera technology. 16mm noiseless cameras allowed anyone and everyone to make a film without the need for expensive production, lighting, or set design. Suddenly film had become independent from the studios, and cinéma vérité was an idea that wanted to distance itself from commercial film production as much as possible. It was like documentary making, and could be seen as such, but often, as in the case of Shadows, was more about blending real situations into a fictional narrative. In Shadows, Cassavetes allowed his actors to improvise their dialogue, and he would then film them without any predetermined framing or camera setup. This gives the film a very ‘real’ feel, and is something that would be refined and improved upon as Cassavetes progressed as a director. Although Cassavetes staged his scenes, which goes against true cinéma vérité principles, he still achieved a visual style that looked spontaneous, thereby lending his films an engaging, immediate quality that traditional cinema couldn’t offer. It moved the audience closer to the characters, which is where Cassavetes excelled remarkably.

Although Shadows was partially improvised, none of his following films were, as he had broken away from the confines of cinéma vérité and taken with him just the visual style which worked wonderfully to give an overwhelming impact to his character driven films. He was so accomplished at directing actors that the performances in his films often came across as being improvised, which is a direct praise to the realism, or perhaps ‘hyper’-realism, they illicit. One actress in particular that personifies this is his wife, Gena Rowlands, who starred in a number of his films, most importantly A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night. In both films she gives performances of undeniable strength as a tragic character going through turbulent times. This kind of character, one beset by hardship, tough situations, dodgy lifestyles and mental illness, is commonplace in Cassavetes’ films. This is perhaps the most palpable pattern that emerges when looking at his oeuvre, as it is touched on at least to some extent in nearly all his works.

The next most overt and probably the most assaulting clue to Cassavetes’ auteurism is his aesthetic style, created through characteristic use of mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, and music. He is able to control everything that is tangible about his films and manipulate it all into a cohesive whole which forms a pertinent signature that is both unmistakeable and impossible to imitate. Cassavetes’ visual style, created primarily through his carefully evolved technique, is absorbing. It pulls the viewer right into the atmosphere of his films through up-close, colourful, gritty camera work, which isn’t concerned with perfection but with perspective. In The Killing of a Chinese Bookie we are given our own private viewpoint to occupy, which feels almost like being inside a bubble that is floating about in the world of our protagonist, Cosmo Vitelli (played by Ben Gazzara). It is not a first person perspective as we do not see through his eyes, but we are still constrained to only his understanding of events. We see alongside him, though as a separate entity, free to make our own assumptions and judgements. In one scene we watch a woman audition for Cosmo. We have already been introduced to this woman in a previous scene, which allowed us to take in her face and general appearance. Now we are restricted to seeing only her lower half, as our view is representing that which Cosmo is judging. He wants to know if she can perform as a dancer, as he already knows she has a nice face and nice breasts, which are the other two requirements for the job. It is up to us to decide, along with Cosmo, if she is talented in addition to being attractive. As it turns out, she is.

The unorthodox framing in this shot, which is also seen throughout the entirety of the film, is utterly intentional. It is not done to avoid showing nudity, as Cassavetes even goes as far as to show nudity in the two scenes immediately before and after this sequence, subtlety reminding us that he is in control and is consciously manipulating our perspective to be as analogous with Cosmo’s as possible. It is also not done to simply be artistic, as the technique has the deliberate outcome of putting us directly into Cosmo’s mindset, which then allows us to delve deeper into his warped situation as it escalates throughout the rest of the film. It is done to bring us as close to the character as possible without resorting to voice over narration or first person perspective. We are still a disconnected, intangible observer, free to watch and judge for ourselves, but from a position that is so close to Cosmo that it becomes almost claustrophobic, re-creating for us the feeling of entrapment that he is experiencing. Cassavetes wants us not only to see what Cosmo sees, but also understand how he sees, he wants us to share his subjectivity. This same technique is used to great effect in A Woman Under the Influence, which leads the audience to feeling as frustrated, abused, and even insane as the main character. Both films utilise a cinéma vérité influenced style, but taken to a much more aware level. The camera bumps and moves freely as if in a documentary, but at the same time it is capturing highly artistic, organic images, with odd angles and unconventional lighting. Focus is constantly shifting, reflecting the mind state of the protagonist when things become hectic and uncontrollable.

It seems that what makes Cassavetes’ films so commanding is the combination of strong, realistic performances with his personal style of introspective, close-up camera work and challenging, transgressive narratives. This is his style, his signature, his distinguishable mark that he leaves on his films. In The Killing of a Chinese Bookie all of his directorial traits are in play, and he was at his peak in terms of creative control and enthusiasm. His directing has one clear outcome in all cases, and that is that it creates an absorbing, personal experience that transports the viewer inside the world of his films and the minds of his characters. In The Killing of a Chinese Bookie this works to put us in a position that is almost first person limited, but not quite. One scene which exploits this superbly is when Cosmo is sent to kill the Chinese bookie. This whole scene is borderline surreal, as it goes for a kind of heightened reality which emphasises the internal conflict and panic within Cosmo. Naturally this helps to dramatise one of the most integral and important scenes in the film. Cleverly, Cassavetes does not show us the dead bookie, but instead pulls our point of view away immediately after the killing, suggesting to us that Cosmo is not able to bring himself to look at what he has done. We are limited to Cosmo’s perspective and his understanding of his surroundings. The ensuing chase scene continues in this style, as we are kept alongside Cosmo as he runs for his life, and are only shown glimpses of the men chasing him. It’s a balancing act, to have a style that pigeonholes the viewer into a certain experience, a certain state of mind, while still managing to maintain a feeling of realism, like the events unfolding are taking place simply by chance, unscripted.

What makes a director an auteur is not a simple distinction. Even the theory itself allows a lot of room for a director to not be an auteur. However, there are some directors who seem almost custom-made to fit into the goals of the theory. John Cassavetes is one such director, as he has a very consistent, intelligent ’signature’ that is visible across a range of his films. Coming from the aesthetic approach of cinéma vérité and combining it with his own structured narratives and skill at pulling fantastic performances from actors; he quickly developed a very mature style that excelled at engaging audiences on multiple levels. Through stylized camera techniques and a predilection for certain character types, Cassavetes’ preoccupations and considerations are shown to be complex, highly prevalent, and overall rewarding when observed across his diverse filmography.

For a short man, John Cassavetes stature has grown at an exponential rate over the past few decades. The recent availability of his films on DVD have allowed him to be re-discovered by a new appreciative generation of film-goers, filmmakers and critics. During his lifetime however, Cassavetes’ films were often met by a perplexed public and dismissive critics. They were accused of being too long, too boring and too depressing. But it is precisely because of Cassavetes’ uncompromising determination to film his vision at any cost (emotionally, physically as well as financially) that has made him revered by budding filmmakers and rightly earned him the title ‘Godfather of American Independent Cinema.’

Although Cassavetes’ commercial success was neither consistent nor on the same scale as contemporary Hollywood films, he was still greatly admired and influential. In an interview during the late ’70s, Jean Luc Godard declared of all the current filmmakers (including himself in the list) the only person who could be described as a’ truly great auteur’ was John Cassavetes. And thanks to Martin Scorsese (who became a life-long friend), Cassavetes’ most critically acclaimed film ‘Woman Under the Influence’ was released to the general public. Cassavetes would have continued clasping the reels of film under his arm as he traipsed from film theatre to film theatre for distribution if Scorsese hadn’t intervened with great verve. He threatened to withdraw his own film ‘Alice don’t live here anymore’ from the 1974 New York Film Festival if they didn’t show Cassavetes’ film. The organisers relented and the rest is history.

To watch A Woman Under the Influence is to watch human beings at their best and worst, at their most fierce state and most fragile. A family home in the suburbs of Los Angeles becomes an increasingly claustrophobic battleground for husband and wife, Nick (played by Peter Falk) and Mabel Longhetti (Gena Rowlands). It is a painful observation of a couple who tear at each other, only to end up clinging desperately to the seams. Cassavetes’ film has been seen by many to be a literal look at a woman and her decline into mental illness. However it is more appropriate to say that it is an examination of a socially inept woman, unable to fulfill the role that her husband, family and society demand her to be. Her outlandish behaviour is misunderstood by outsiders as her ‘going crazy.’ Nick’s behaviour is unpredictable and volatile, but because he is seen to be reacting to Mabel, he is not the one deemed mad. But both of them are victims and both of them are guilty for the vicious circle that ensues. 

What is extraordinary about Cassavetes as a director is his ability to coax such impressive and believable performances from his actors. A Woman Under the Influence was shot six days a week for 13 weeks. It was an exhausting and emotional experience for cast and crew – so much so that they when they finished filming for the day they’d just go back to their hotel rooms, avoiding bars or parties. They were too drained and this created an intense and weary atmosphere on set, which is integral to the interaction of actors. Cassavetes also liked to mix his cast of his actors with non-professionals and even his own family members (his mum plays Nick Longhetti’s mum and his kids play the Longhetti children.) He did this purposefully so that the non-professionals reminded the actors of naturalistic performances and realism. Whereas the actors inspired the non-professionals with their skill. It was a brilliant symbiotic relationship which plays beautifully on screen, best illustrated in the Spaghetti scene where the construction workers try to have a meal, warily whilst Mabel and Nick have a domestic.

When Mabel pleads with Nick ‘Tell me what you want to – how you want me to be,’ it is a phrase that would probably ring true with the actors pleading to Cassavetes. He was a director notorious for not giving direction.An example of this is when O.G Dunn who played Garson Cross (a stranger that Mabel picks up in a bar one night)would constantly beg with Cassavetes to tell him how he wanted him to play the character for this scene. But Cassavetes would just stare at him for a long time and then utter a vague answer which was of no use. Dunn kept repeating and pleading with Cassavetes for a hint of information about his character, growing more exasperated at Cassavetes’ silence and humiliated at the whole crew watching this scene unfold. Then Cassavetes turned his back and began filming. Garson Cross was a wonderfully quirky, hesitant and nervous man. Cassavetes knew that if he had told Dunn directly to play Cross as a hesitant, nervous man, he would not have gotten the performance he did. He deliberately created a state of insecurity in certain actors for certain scenes. He wanted to encourage their hesitancy and frustration to help play their characters.

He was also a generous director, respectful of his actors. He allowed them to interpret their characters as they felt. Even though he had written the script he never imposed his ideas on others. He allowed actors freedom too in how they were filmed. A scene would be roughly marked for an actor to move to a certain point and then to another, but when the cameras rolled actors could move out of shot if they liked and it was the job of the cameraman to try to keep up and capture them in the frame. This helped in scenes to add a sense of chaos and immediacy, like when the doctor is called over to try and sedate Mabel and she tries to resist. The camera would zoom in fast for a close-up, making the action become slightly blurred adding a sense of claustrophobia before re-adjusting the focus and letting the audience catch their breath. But camerawork is never central to the film as Cassavetes rarely wants to detract from the emotions playing out on screen.

A Woman Under the Influence is also made up of mostly long takes, Cassavetes’ rarely wanting to break up the mood of a scene or break away from a character’s face. The camera will linger over Mabel’s face, allowing the audience to note every minute movement that Rowland’s makes to reveal her character’s internal emotional journey. The curl of a lip, a dismissive batting of the eyes, an apologetic lifting of one eyebrow. So much is revealed without a sound leaving her lips.

Cassavetes also uses music sparingly but to devastating effect, from an impromptu Verdi aria sung at the dining table by one of the construction workers, to piano chords being played as the morning after dawns on the couple to music from Puccini’s La Boeheme as they embrace one another in bed.

So what influence is Mabel Longhetti under? Cassavetes leaves the answer ambiguous and wisely so. As the man said himself ‘I won’t make shorthand films, because I don’t want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths.’ Not only was he a creative renegade who enabled himself to have full artistic control over his visions and in the process gave the finger to the Establishment. He also showed us what we feared, what was personal, what was real and therefore universal for all to see. He made us voyeurs of what lies beneath.